They make indisputably great cinema and simultaneously sell a lot
of weapons. Battalions of the walking dead swarm after the living,
intent on consuming their flesh. Individuals bitten by the afflicted
find themselves infected and the cycle spirals until small pockets of
healthy survivors cling to their lives in a post-apocalyptic world of
violence and deprivation. The resulting scenario invariably involves
tension, drama, gore, guns and girls. Nothing short of muscular
spandex-clad superheroes sells movie tickets faster.

Zombies revolutionized the paramilitary survival industry.
Survivalists in years past were a fairly marginalized mob. The general
public feared them and the government had a pesky habit of burning them
alive. Nowadays, however, zombies have put survival prepping firmly
within the realm of civilized company. I actually overheard a
conversation among a group of senior citizens at a local restaurant
recently concerning the finer points of preparing for the coming zombie
apocalypse. However, as with most fantasy constructs, might there be a
kernel of truth to the zombie legend?

Haiti is generally acknowledged as the locale where zombie legends
first found their legs. Haitian voodoo rituals were themselves birthed
in the West African paganism that perfused African natives prior to
their being kidnapped into slavery and forcibly removed to Haiti. In the
African versions powerful Bokor or Witch Doctors were said to be able to
reanimate the dead and force them to do their dark bidding. It was these
original folk tales that followed enslaved Africans out of the Dark
Continent and served as seed for the Haitian zombie mythos.

Interestingly, there is a strikingly-similar creature that
resonates from European mythology called the Revenant. The Revenant,
from the Latin for "Returning," was also said to be a
reanimated corpse and the associated legends were widespread in the
Middle Ages. The Revenant was purported to be inspiration for a great
deal of vampire mythology as well as Shelley's Frankenstein. The
dead suspected of being Revenants were typically exhumed, decapitated
and then had their hearts excised, burned or both.

A fair amount of effort has been expended studying the Haitian
zombie concept from a scientific perspective. There is rumored to be a
powerful drug made from Tetrodotoxin, an immensely poisonous compound
derived from the puffer fish, combined with a dissociative drug called
Datura, itself also a natural product. The combination of these two
drugs, when inoculated into an open wound, was rumored to produce a
death-like state. Victims would awake from this condition, frequently
after burial, exhibiting a state of psychosis. As to whether any bizarre
behavior might be attributable to the neurological effects of these
drugs or the psychological trauma of being buried alive is best left to
the philosophers.

ZOMBIE DISEASE

Modern medicine orbits around two broad categories of infectious
organisms. Bacteria are somewhat akin to tiny microscopic plants and are
responsible for everything from staph skin structure infections and
strep throat to urinary tract infections and STDs such as gonorrhea and
chlamydia. It is for infections by the malevolent variants that we use
antibiotic drugs.

Viruses, by contrast, are much smaller and trickier beasties. Up
until fairly recently, fighting viral infections was solely the
responsibility of your body's own immune system. Though there are
some effective medications for a few viral infections these days,
treatment is typically supportive-- water, rest and creature comforts
until the disease runs its course. Typical examples of viral infections
include head colds, genital herpes, the classic 24-hour stomach virus
and HIV.

By contrast, prion diseases are just plain weird. Prions are
self-replicating proteins that are technically not even alive. Prions
are improperly-folded proteins that have the bad grace to cause healthy
proteins in a living host to follow their lead and refold into
detrimental forms. Prions can be contracted through ingestion or contact
with infected tissues, frequently the brain. The really spooky part
about prion diseases is they are utterly untreatable and the prions
themselves are frequently fairly heat-stable. This means cooking may not
neutralize the infectious particles.

One of the first prion diseases studied was kuru. This malady was
originally documented among the Fore people of Papua New Guinea in the
1950's. These natives were cannibals and it was found that women
and children contracted kuru at a rate eight times greater than the men
in these communities. It was eventually found that the men got the
choicest cuts from vanquished human enemies leaving the women and
children to consume the undesirable leftovers like brains where the
largest density of infectious prions reside.

Kuru is a degenerative neurological disorder that is a type of
Transmissible Spongiform Encephalopathy (TSE). This means these prions
self-replicate in brain tissue leaving little microscopic sponge-like
voids. Initial symptoms include truncal ataxia (a loss of coordination
among central muscle systems), unsteady stance and gait, tremors and
slurred speech. Starting to sound familiar? As if that isn't spooky
enough, there is a latent phase between exposure and first symptoms of
between 5 to 20 years.

A prion disease called Bovine Spongiform Encephalopathy (BSE) is
endemic to cows. Daniel Gajdusek, Michale Alpers, and Baruch Blumberg
won the Nobel Prize in Medicine in 1976 for their research demonstrating
prion diseases were infectious across species, so this is of great
concern to humans. We Americans do consume quite a lot of beef.

A related malady in humans, Creutzfeldt-Jakob Disease (CJD), is
also caused by prions and has a comparably dire prognosis. There is a
form of CJD caused by a spontaneous genetic mutation and it is currently
theorized the kuru outbreak in New Guinea began with a single host
developing this disease spontaneously around 1900. Apparently somebody
ate that poor unfortunate guy for dinner and the cycle began in earnest.

HUNTERS BEWARE

A related prion illness is Chronic Wasting Disease (CWD) and it has
been identified in deer, elk and moose in North America. CWD prions are
most concentrated in the brain, spinal cord, eyes, spleen, tonsils and
lymph nodes, so as though I needed another reason not to eat those
parts, it is a good idea to avoid eating these organs in game animals.
CWD results in chronic weight loss and such weird behaviors as teeth
grinding, listlessness, blank facial expressions (a subjective
assessment at best when it comes to the emotional state of a moose),
hyperexcitability and decreased interaction with other animals. CWD is
invariably lethal and is of great concern given the prevalence of deer,
elk and moose hunting in America.

It is the British outbreak in the '80's of BSE that
prevents anyone in the USA from donating blood if they have spent more
than three months in the UK between 1980 and 1996. As this disease has
such a long latency period the fear is it could be transmitted via
infected beef and then years go by before anyone knows a population was
affected. Given that typical cooking temperatures do not deactivate the
deadly prions, quarantine of affected humans and prophylactic slaughter
of affected cow populations are at present the only effective controls.

WHAT IT MEANS

The bottom line is there are indeed diseases that have been
documented wherein the sufferers stagger about zombie-like in a state of
psychosis fully capable of inflicting violence upon others. You actually
contract some of these diseases by eating affected brain tissue. Some of
these illnesses have such long latency periods a person could be
infected for years before showing any symptoms. What is worse is some of
these maladies can be passed by conventionally-sterilized surgical
instruments or even hamburgers. This could theoretically allow entire
populations to be affected before effective controls could be instituted
to prevent the spread of the disease.

Even so, as a physician I don't fret much about epidemics of
prion diseases turning the population into brain-eating zombies. As an
American I will continue to enjoy a good hamburger just as much as the
next guy.

Little will start a spirited conversation faster than asking a
couple of gun guys what they recommend for the ideal zombie gun. As a
rugged individualist, I typically set aside a little ammo labeled the
"Zombie Stash" and maintain my weapons such that I could get
to them quickly in a crisis. Whether driven by irrational politicians
who have raised living for the moment to an art form, the potentiality
of natural disasters, or possible terrorist action, I see little harm in
preparing for a rainy day. The fact such preparations would be
hypothetically effective against battalions of zombie ghouls is just
gravy.

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